Fogd a Kezem Alapitvany

Fogd a Kezem Alapitvany

description of organisation

Fogd a Kezem Alapítvány (Hold My Hand Foundation) has been established in 1991 and has been working with adult mentally disabled people. The Foundation aims to provide suitable working environment and daycare service for it's clients, organizes and implements mainly integrated projects, that involves other organisations, companies, schools and universities.
This service is all-inclusive, with differential employment helps to discover and develop their capabilities and skills according to their somatic and mental stage and age. Empowerment and autonomy are the keywords in our social work with the clients.
We like to call them "Youngsters", as we found this the least prejudist. We would like to host the volunteers mainly in our Daycare centre, but it's possible to see and try the Living centre, and if the it suits better for the volunteer, we can arrange for her/him to do projects there. Sometimes we need assistance for following the youngsters on the busses, who live in the Living centre between the Daycare and the Living centre, this time we ask the volunteer to help the professional helper of the Living centre.
Work-therapy and Daycare Centre: in this establishment we have 40 Youngsters working in different Workshops (creative, paper, household, assembly and candle). The Youngsters prepare handmade crafts, which we sell on diverse markets in the city and shops in the country. The Youngsters with their work create value, which is also a therapy for them, while our helpers provide professional support and development. The Youngsters get salary for their work. This is protected employment, which is seggregated, so we feel important to organize many programs for them to integrate them into society. In this also can be a great help the volunteer, because she/he represent a part of another world, and can give a great knowledge, lot of experiences, can show another culture and living, so it's possible for the Youngsters to get these experiences. It's difficult to take them to abroud and learn about the EU, this way the volunteer can bring it for them. In the Daycare centre the Youngsters work in 5 different workshop, they learn really about how to "work" as in a real workplace, still it's protected. The workshops are creative (paper, textile, wool, etc.), therapy (main focus is on the learning and development), household and kitchen (cleaning and serving food), assembly (work order from companies) and candle workshop. In these workshops the Youngsters work mainly before lunch (most of them work in 4 hours), after lunch we organize freetime activities for them. We await that the volunteer helps, assists and supports the work of the workshops, and we encourage her/him to organize and implement freetime activities on the afternoons. We help them in the process.
Besides this we support the volunteer to manage her/his own projects in the Foundation in whatever topic she/he is interested.

Living Centre: 9 Youngsters are living in a house owned by the Foundation, where professional helpers make sure, that they have a proper living environment. Here we focus on teaching and training the clients to be independent in their life. Autonomy, respect, housekeeping skills are in between the main subjects we are teaching them, as the goal would be to help them to move into a supported living environment, so they wouldn't be in problem, when the parents die. We are happy, if the volunteer chooses to spend time here and organize activities for them. In this case we offer to take free in the mornings, and work on the afternoons.

Pilot projects: our Foundation lays a great emphasis on projects, specially integrated projects. We try to cooperate with many organisations and associations, through these we would like to show the world, that the disabled people are useful citizens of society. These projects are the Ability Café program (6 of our Youngsters help in coffee bars and restaurants in Pécs voluntarily), Art Brut Seminarium (some of our youngsters participate in art courses at the University of Art together with the university students as integrated program), integrated drama projects together with KACS (association in Pécs, we work together with gypsie university students and gymnasium students in integrated projects, through this we produce theater pieces, in which they perform and lead discussion about integration topic in different schools, cultural events, and this year at the POSZT - Theatre Festival in Pécs). We like to involve the volunteer in these programs to make them more colourful.

EVS: we have been working with the program since 2001, we hosted many young volunteers from abroud and also have sent many to other countries. Our daily work influenced by all the experience, what we've got through EVS, and we have still contact with many of our ex-volunteers. They have expressed, that their EVS helped greatly in their life (professional and work areas and also mentally in their personal life).

Participants with fewer opportunities

This organisation has a physical environment suitable for young people with physical, sensory or other disabilities (such as wheelchair access and similar.

This organisation has additional mentoring or other support suitable for young people with social obstacles, educational difficulties, cultural differences or similar.

inclusion topics

This organisation is willing to involve volunteers who face situations which make their participation in activities more difficult, from the following categories for different types of project: